


The answer is Yes

by Phrenotobe



Category: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dragons, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 06:44:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5656444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phrenotobe/pseuds/Phrenotobe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their first meeting is in the garden in Lyon's capital, the warmth seeping through into Lyon's bones as he steps outside to see them. Under her hand to shade her eyes, Eirika fixes him with a piercing gaze, her body tipping in synchronicity with Ephraim as they both come forward in step and lean into Lyon's space, akin to twin heads of a hydra joined at the hip.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The answer is Yes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Echinoderma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Echinoderma/gifts).



> You post a lot of really good headcanons and so I started doodling some notes into a document and it got way out of hand. I hope you don't mind that I pulled a lot of your thoughts to make it.

Their first meeting is in the garden in Lyon's capital, the warmth seeping through into Lyon's bones as he steps outside to see them. Under her hand to shade her eyes, Eirika fixes him with a piercing gaze, her body tipping in synchronicity with Ephraim as they both come forward in step and lean into Lyon's space, akin to twin heads of a hydra joined at the hip. Eirika is arrestingly lively, touching, embracing. She seems younger than she should for her age, and in the spaces she isn't, Ephraim folds in, a fond thump on the shoulder in greeting.

The pair try to teach him how to hoard things as they do, a pre-arranged plan as they put coins into his hands, touching his shoulders and arms, edging him to corners of the gardens and asking him to look and see if he can find a good place to put them. He demures, overwhelmed by the pout of Eirika's mouth, the sullen tip of Ephraim's brow. Grado is a rich country; one of the most healthy economies on the continent, and a small pile of pieces under a tree won't alter the balance in any way.  
He kneels in any case; brushing the soil away from the roots of a newly planted bush and laying their two foreign coins there, stuffing a hand into his robes and pulling out one of his own to join them with a dull clink.  
As he rises, he notes that Eirika has stolen Ephraim's frown, the open pout of hers now his in wonder. Lyon uses his foot to kick the earth back into place, and is jarred into another resounding hug. He did it right. They are proud of him.

Called in for dinner, and they're all royal smiles, invested and staring guilelessly at fruit and unleavened bread, sharpness in the edges of Ephraim's mouth as he tears into his food. Ephraim eats like a bandit with both hands, like some devil stolen into the castle under the guise of an angelic boy and his double. Table manners are what Eirika attempts, already attentive. Lyon has no doubt that Ephraim will know how when they return.

They come back to him, again and again when they can, inviting him to their home that feels too cold and too wet, fog heavy on Lyon's chest when he breathes. The mud in the gardens is sticky clay, the trees tall and evergreen. Still, they lead him by the hand, showing him the hollow roots where they keep their valuables, the loose brick in the wall that holds a hollow behind.  
Lyon knows the rules by now, and they never touch, only show what they have built. Brazen as he kneels to look, he pours gemstones and silver from his pockets, threaded on string. It feels like the first day they met when he stands, but Eirika's ears are pink, her face fitted into the comfort of Ephraim's shoulder as she averts her eyes shyly. Ephraim stares, his throat bobbing as he swallows before he breaks into a smile. Lyon's dare won, and they are again upon him, snuggling around his ungainly cough like puppies.

Another visit, Grado's hot sun on their backs and warm air in their mouths. “Your sister is beautiful,” Lyon says privately, tipping Ephraim's face towards himself, the fine hairs of his adolescent chin the softest thing before their lips connect and fumble. But Ephraim is beautiful too, the blossom of narcissus in youth. Eirika sleeps in the room next to them, tired by the journey. Ten years have passed and the twins are still slim young reeds, even as Lyon settles uncomfortably into the crackling and oily middle of his teenhood.  
Lyon learns the tremble of Ephraim's mouth, finds it again reflected through a mirror as Eirika tips forward a day later to have her first kiss. She is too much a noble lady to take Lyon's, feels it should be a precious thing, and given with full seriousness. Lyon keeps them both, a pair of blessings he doesn't know what to do with yet. There is always a use and a recipe to be found.

Lyon has never seen their mother, but often wonders.  
Fado is such an ordinary king, much as Lyon has met some. His children seem distilled from a different source, loved by the sun when it crests the clouds of their home. Ephraim looks dangerous when he grins, not hiding the double incisors that curl down from his gums. Eirika covers her mouth as politeness should, but instead it displays the scales that scatter in patterns down the line of her slim arm, red and yellow and glittering. Had they been born closer to the equator, perhaps they would always shimmer with light. Lyon finds more scales at the nape of Ephraim's head. He didn't doubt them; had already felt the supple give and grain of the ones that angle up into the dip of their twin palms.

Slow to mature, somewhere around Lyon's seventeenth birthday they'd caught up again as though they'd got bored of waiting for Lyon's clumsiness to settle. Lyon still creaks his words; Eirika chimes like a golden bell, clear and sweet, and Ephraim's tones have settled an octave deeper, lower in the mornings and late at night.

Eirika's pupils always shrink to needle points when her pulse rises. Lyon sees them, never wanting to talk about it, only wanting and waiting to watch it happen. It is easily visible within her blue eyes, when she feels overwhelmed or troubled. As Lyon spreads difficult books in front of her, he asks her attention and stares as she looks, stealing the moments in between her digestion of the words and her troubled glance as she tries to weigh up the value of asking him to explain it all. Lyon would never tell her full truths. In moments he’s drawing the book over to himself, speaking aloud, putting an arm over her shoulder to comfort her. She can’t help but touch back, forever tactile. 

And in the evenings in either house, when twin energy has been run off and they come back to him and the fire, they share everything.  
Lyon considers himself lucky to have such generous friends to share so much with him. Every time he offers up what he can, they repay it in doubles. He has cracking pieces of dragonskin, shed from the itchy tips of Eirika's pointed ears, an end piece of a thumbnail grown long and curved and sharp but broken off through a forgotten mishap. If he wanted puppets, he'd have them easily with this much to charm. He tries to drop the eager tendrils of the thought from his mind.

Ephraim is too much of a fidget to concentrate on the words of the stories from the books Lyon brings, soothed by Lyon's hands in his hair, rubbing the fine little scales at the nape of his neck, soft and pliable under his thumbs. It feels good to Lyon, too, calming the crackle in his brain that dark magic sometimes sets, the thrum of draconic purrs in tandem forcing out the haze. 

In a book that Lyon has read more than once, there is a recipe that calls for a dragon's heart. Lyon tips Ephraim's head back toward himself with a touch of his forehead, bracing around his chin. His hand lands on his neck, feeling the slow thrum of his healthy heartbeat. Eirika is live beside him, fitted to Lyon's shoulder with both of her legs over one of his knees, bumping against the easy hang of Ephraim's head. His mind whirls with wonder as he sits patiently, listening to her deal with the script, running her fingers over rich ink, the scrape of her sharp fingertips upon the vellum.  
Would it be Ephraim that would be the solution? Eirika's sub-vocal thrum echoes as she reads, something she can never shake when she settles into a story, giving resonance to all she says. It makes Ephraim's head heavy in Lyon's lap. Lyon strokes a line across Ephraim's throat so tender it draws a chirp unreserved out of his mouth, and then Lyon wonders how hard he'd have to press down with the knife. Would he offer it up, if Lyon asked?


End file.
